shannonwatch's blog

Ray McGovern is a former CIA Presidential Briefer and is an expert on Russia. He worked for the CIA for twenty seven years. Dismayed with the intelligence used to support the US war with Iraq, Mr McGovern, along with others, formed Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in the US and is a member of its steering group. He spoke at a public meeting in Dublin on Tuesday, November 1st. The following is a report on his talk by PANA member Michael Clarke. It is followed by a video recording of an interview with Ray conducted by Roger Cole (also of PANA).

The meeting was organized by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) and the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM). Mr McGovern made clear that his work as an analyst was separate from the activities of CIA personnel in the field (organizing coups, murdering, kidnapping, etc.) The meeting, which was held in a hotel in central Dublin, was reasonably well attended but, in addition and before the meeting, Mr McGovern was brought to Leinster House by Roger Cole of PANA and also met the media.

On Friday last (November 4th) a Dutch Navy submarine, the HNLMS Bruinvis, arrived in the Port of Cork. The 68m Walrus class submarine which has an armament of around 40 torpedoes made it's way through Cork harbour, right up into the city, and on Saturday was tied up at Horgan's Quay. Shannonwatch joined local peace activists who came out to peacefully demonstrate at the presence of this NATO vessel in Irish waters.

In the course of the afternoon someone allegedly threw a container of blood or red paint at the Submarine. When the Gardai arrived they were asked to arrest the Dutch NATO sailors who were armed with automatic rifles on the deck of the submarine. Needless to say they didn't do this.

John Jefferies, one of the organisers of the demo said "It seems to me people will make a fuss about a purely symbolic gesture but completely ignore the presence of a heavily armed military submarine in our neutral port and NATO crewmen carrying assault weapons in our port.

Today was a beautiful day, at least in Ireland, where no bombs were falling, and no refugees were drowning as their boats sank while they were fleeing from the wars in the Middle East and Africa. At the beautiful Glen of Aherlow in Co Tipperary, John Kerry was being awarded the Tipperary Peace Prize, for allegedly stopping wars and getting rid of Syrian chemical weapons. The truth is that it was Russian ; President Vladimir Putin who persuaded Syrian President Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons, not John Kerry or the US.

John Kerry and the US have not stopped any wars in recent times. But the US has begun wars, and is continuing to engage in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.

We're often asked which of the planes using Shannon Airport are US military planes. The answer is that quite a lot of them are. In addition to the ones operated directly by the US Air Force, Navy and Army there are no fewer than 24 companies that have what are called "indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity" contracts to provide international airlift services to the US military.

If you see any of these planes at Shannon they could be carrying armed US soldiers or cargo. They are technically classified as "civilian" but in reality they are operating as US military planes.

This evening Shannon Airport once again appears to be contributing to the pain being suffered by thousands of men, women and children in the Middle East. There were no fewer than five United States war planes there at about 4pm.

Two of these were US Navy C-40 cargo and troop transport aircraft, numbers 5832 and 8981. They arrived at Shannon last night from Sigonella Air base in Sicily (Italy), and probably came from the Middle East before that. They may well be on their way back to the US to collect more war materials that will be used in the ongoing assault on Mosul in Iraq.

Despite numerous requests, to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Foreign Affairs will not provide any information about the US military planes that use Shannon Airport. Shannonwatch has been keeping its own records for many years, and since the Department won't even say how many US military planes pass through Shannon, we will continue to provide details of what we know.

With that in mind, here is a summary of the number of US Air Force, Army and Navy planes that have landed at Shannon so far this year.